shadow of the day
by a warrior queen
Summary: You don't have to be afraid and lonely anymore. —Sasuke.


**dedication: **To my forever boy.  
**summary: **You don't have to be afraid and lonely anymore.  
**notes: **Happy birthday to my most favorite character ever. I love you and all your stupid decisions and your mistakes and your complexity.

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shadow of the day

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When the war is over, he doesn't realize it until all of his bones hurt and the spaces in between them are filled up with an empty feeling. Did anyone know what the feeling of emptiness felt like? He knows-it feels heavy and weighing, as if at any second he will fall to his knees, as if the rain pelting against his skin is coaxing all the repentance inside him and he's asking for mercy.

He feels the marrow inside his exhausted bones soak up the feeling of being alone yet there's thousands of shinobi, both dead and alive, surrounding him. He feels dead inside because it's finally all over and there are no dead people whispering into his ears, pointing with bloody fingers towards all the directions he must go to. There are no more dead clansmen demanding he lives his life for them and only them because they are all finally asleep and gone and he's alone.

He's so fucking alone.

Uchiha Sasuke drops to the ground, on his knees, and looks up at the dark sky and wonders what is there for him now? What is he to do now, he asks, and there's no answer. There's never an answer. The dead hovering behind his shoulders are quiet—they're gone, now, and he's all alone.

His eyes roll back as he falls back with a thud, curls up and let's his exhaustion, his grief, his loneliness take over.

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He wakes up inside a medical tent.

There's screaming everywhere; orders being barked and tent numbers being dictated. Sasuke can picture the medics pointing their bloody fingers left and right, jabbing bloody thumbs over their shoulders and nudging bloody chins forwards. He tries to sit up, but he's too tired to even breathe so he just lies there, staring at the ceiling of the tent, wondering what is to become of him now.

There can't be any pardon for a criminal like him.

There can't be anything for someone like him.

Only death and blood.

Sasuke should be used to this.

He closes his eye and falls back into a deep sleep.

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"—and that's when Sakura-chan started crying. I guess old man Tazuna didn't know about all that happened, huh? I mean… We looked like a pretty legit team, back then, huh? I mean, I thought we did… Even if you were a douche and Sakura-chan was always crying and I did… Seem to have some issues. But that's us and that's Team Seven, right?"

Sasuke slowly turns his head.

Naruto sits next to his futon, binds wrapped around his head, his cheek sporting a thick wad of cotton held together by x-shaped tape; his arm is in a makeshift sling and his eyes are glazed over and a deep blue like he's lost inside his head and reliving old memories that shouldn't even exist anymore.

Team Seven…

…Naruto said Team Seven was reborn again and Sasuke can remember how they fought as a team; how he had been completely shocked at Sakura's power and how he and Naruto fell back into their dysfunctional ragtag teamwork. But…

He slowly turns his head to face the ceiling again.

"They'll pardon you," he hears Naruto say lowly. As if he's talking more to himself than telling Sasuke stories of all he's missed out on. "They will. Or I'll _make_ them pardon you. I'll… I don't know, but I'll do something. The system's shitty ruling stops here."

The corner of Sasuke's lips twitch upwards. It's a sarcastic smirk—Naruto will never change.

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He's in a dream, he knows.

He's in a terrain of nothing but grass reaching up to his knees, swaying to the soft breeze. He looks around at the hazy, distorted place, wondering why of all places he's dreaming of such an emptily peaceful place. He normally dreams in hues of gray and red; dead dreams filled with splotches of red blood everywhere and there's always this little boy running… Chasing after something or being chased—Sasuke's never asleep long enough to figure out which one it is.

But here…

"Why am I here?" he asks and his voice is low and gruff.

There's no one to answer, though, and it's not as if he's expecting an answer anyway. There's never an answer.

Except when there is.

"Little brother?"

His dream-self whirls around and stares at the family staring back at him. There's his father with his too-serious eyes and his mother with her too-soft smile and his brother in his too-innocent five-year-old form. They're but an apparition because he can see the trees right through them but he sees them there, standing close and he wants to run towards them because what else is there to do?

But his mother shakes her head and his father's too-serious eyes flash and his brother takes a step forward.

"It's time to live," he says and Sasuke wonders what he means and why it sounds so stupid and cliché coming out of the mouth of the brother that sacrificed everything for everyone and left him all alone in the dark. "You don't have to be afraid and lonely anymore."

"But—"

And so he wakes up.

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He jolts up with a deep intake of breath and his ribs hurt at the action but he doesn't even have the time to groan in pain because his tent is crowded. He blinks the haze out of his eye and stares at the eight people he's known since he was a little boy. Sasuke frowns at them as they hover around him, all broken and bruised and stitched up with binds and cotton and tape.

Why… Are they…?

Naruto breaks the ice with one of his wide, toothy grins.

"Happy birthday, Sasuke-teme!"

And it all settles in his bones.

He's in a daze as Ino breaks away from the group and nears him, placing a flower crown made out of pink roses around his head and smiling through the tears that brim her eyes and he stares at her, and stares at them and doesn't feel the pain as Sakura throws herself on him, her arms around his neck and her face hidden in his shoulder as she sobs a mantra of ten million things he's never asked her for, but she gives without a second thought.

Sasuke slowly turns and observes as she cries for him, a memory long buried resurfacing in his mind.

But the rest of the Rookie Nine are clapping and hooting and grinning at him as if everything that's happened between all them is buried and they're the Rookies again—the nine of them. These stupid idiots gathered around his tent, never forgetting a day he, himself, has forgotten about.

Kiba throws an arm over Hinata who links her arm around Ino's who grabs Shikamaru's hand who rests his arm on Chouji's shoulder who wraps an arm around Shino who keeps Naruto in place by placing a hand on Naruto's shoulder. And it's them standing around the futon where he lays and where Sakura's kneeled at, hugging him.

It's an acceptance; a pardon without an apology.

The corner of Sasuke's lips quirk upwards.

"Welcome home, Sasuke-kun," Sakura says as she sniffles.

He nods his head, his flower crown still in place. This is home.


End file.
